Pork Ribs with Rice 排骨米饭

Pork Ribs with Rice (排骨米饭) is a bowl of stewed pork ribs in their broth served with plain rice, and Qingdao News calls Qingdao (青岛) its birthplace. Qingdao News says ribs and rice were already sold near Zhongshan Road (中山路) in the 1930s and 1940s, and says the dish was chosen as one of the city's ten signature snacks in Qingdao's first snack selection in the mid-1990s.

Flavour and texture

The broth is clear and savoury without being greasy. The ribs are a glossy pale yellow, and the meat parts from the bone at a touch of the chopsticks and falls apart in the mouth.

How it is eaten

Qingdao people take a mouthful of the broth before they start on the ribs. Many shops now add vegetables to the ribs: the Migecun (米哥村) shop is credited by Qingdao News with starting the trend of adding Chinese cabbage, potato and kelp. At Xinlanhan (新懒汉) the ribs are drier, and diners strip the meat off and mix it into the rice, finishing with the broth left in the bowl.

Where it comes from

Before Wanhechun (万和春) opened in the 1980s, each seller used its own recipe and ingredients, and broths could be clear, white or tea-coloured. Qingdao News says no account of the dish can leave out Wanhechun. The family behind it traces its rib recipe to a method for cooking pork found by the chairwoman's father-in-law, who opened a grocery in 1941, and the first Wanhechun rib-and-rice shop opened in 1985 on Weihai Road (威海路) in the Taidong (台东) area, selling nothing but ribs and rice. From 1999 the brand served its ribs and rice with a clay pot (砂锅) as standard. Wanhechun was named a China Time-honoured Brand (中华老字号) in 2007, and Qingdao News reports it was recognised as Shandong provincial intangible cultural heritage in 2015.